The Glade 4.0

So, with a potential job change coming soon, I'm likely in the market for a new phone. I know some people here are phone-crazy nuts, anyone have any major suggestions? While I'm not really an apple guy, I do know several people very happy with their iphones, and some very happy with their droids. It doesn't look like there's been a lot of change in the phone market recently, anything new come out that's awesome?

I switched from iPhone 4 to Windows Phone (HTC HD7) and I'm pretty happy. Yes there are some OS short-comings but it's still first generation. There are some HUGE platform improvements coming to WP with the next update, named Mango, and they're looking pretty great. Multitasking, browser upgrades, tons more developer support, etc. It's a bonus that my phone has Office on it as well, comes in handy a lot with work.

Oh, and MS has just announced that they're going to allow users to side load apps (coming from Android this would be no big deal, but equivalence on iPhone means jail breaking) onto their phones. No more details past that yet, but they've had a great open dialogue with developers and it's looking pretty good.

What carrier?

I actually don't have a carrier yet, I'm kind of letting the phone decision decide that as well. My wife is currently on sprint, but her contract is up, so I'll probably move her wherever the new contract is.

Ok, well.. Current best WP models:

AT&T: Dell Venue Pro (Portrait slider)
T-Mobile: HTC HD7 or Dell Venu Pro
Sprint: HTC Arrive (HD7 + QWERTY)
Verizon: HTC Trophy (only option)

I really wanted to get the Dell Venue Pro but they took forever to initially ship it so I ended up settling on the HD7. The Dell phone is pretty awesome though, loved how it fit my hands.

Video of upcoming updates: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OP30F3ZxTmw

Cool stuff, do they have a timeline for mango?

Sprint: HTC EVO 3D
Verizon: Motorola Droid X2

Personally I prefer EVO as I like HTC's Sense integration better than Motorola's Blur, but the X2 has a Nvidia Terga 2 processor, and while not quite as fast as the dual core Snapdragon in the EVO a lot of games are optimized for and some even require the Terga to download.

As for T-mobile and AT&T I stopped keeping track of phones on either are both of their networks as awful (at least around here & I guess most places as they are rated the worst carriers) so I wouldn't touch them with a 20 foot pole, and soon their suckiness will be combined into one huge ball of suck when they merge.

I'm not interested in the "3D imaging" features of the EVO 3D, so that's their major selling point gone. Why would you go with the droid X2 over the droid charge, the dual-core processor?

Mango is supposed to be out "this fall".

I love 3D, but the EVO 3D reportedly has terrible battery life and the camera is sub-par. If I were going to get an Android device, I would probably go with the Galaxy S II

Yeah, i'm actually not interested in 3D either, I find it just to be a stupid gimmick, however the 3D is only on 3D specific movies, pics and games, otherwise it's a normal screen so anything I'd use it for wouldn't have 3D on, and aside from 3D it's one of the top phones, 1.2Ghz Snapdragon processor, 4.3" qHD display, 1GB of ram, 720p video recording, physical camera button & a large 1730mAh. Really the only spot it's "lacking" in is the camera, but not really imo, it has a 5mp camera, well two of the actually for taking 3D pics which you and switch between 2D and 3D, but those higher mega pixel phone cameras are a joke anyways due to crappy optics, the 5mp in the EVO 3D takes better pics than the 8mp in the old EVO 4G.

There's a few reasons I like the X2 better, higher res display qHD (960x540) vs WVGA (800x480), I hate Samsung's Touchwiz (though you can get around having to see that), Dual core 1ghz CPU vs single core 1ghz CPU & I like how the X2 looks better, of course the Charge has it's own advantages, 4G LTE, front camera & Swype keyboard, but between those difference I like the X2, of course the EVO 3D combines the advantages of both phones into one phone so that's my choice personally and what i'll be upgrading to next month.



I've seen lots of conflicting reviews on the EVO 3D, i'm wondering if some got old prototype builds or what, the comparison pics between the EVO 3D and EVO 4G showed how much sharper a picture the 3D took, battery life complaints is the broken record complaint of smartphones, smartphone = poor battery life, plain and simple, they all suck, I think the only complaint I saw that seemed to be pretty consistent was the 3D effects in the little content that uses it, but that's to be expected from gimmicky technology that's not ready for prime time yet.

I'm curious where you got your impressions; they seem to be in direct opposition to reviews:



Emphasis mine.

From these pictures.....



Look at the detail on the frog, the 3D looks way sharper



To me the EVO 3D's pictures look significantly sharper than the 4G's pics, the 4G's look very blurry in comparison.

Heh. Probably because they're focused on entirely different things, and from different angles.

Honestly, that's the worst "side by side" comparison I've ever seen.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

The 3D shots look sharper, but they're very desaturated. You're also looking at overly-large pictures. Let's see what happens when they're put into real-world sizes...



I think if I didn't know anything about photo editing, I'd prefer the 4G.

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I ...

Really ...

You know ...

Well ...

Oh **** it ...

DOT DOT DOT

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They do look desaturated compared to the EVO 4G's pics, but owning an EVO 4G I can tell you at default setting the saturation is a bit high on default settings on an EVO 4G, so desaturated compared to the 4G isn't necessarily a bad thing, of course since you can adjust the saturation (at least on HTC phones, I know I can't with the default camera app on my Samsung Galaxy Tab) that point's kind of moot.

Sure, every phone has camera options, but unlike the EVO 4G, there's no spot, center, or average setting to control how light is metered. This means that the 3D shots end up being hit-or-miss depending on your environment. I would bet that your desaturated plant example above is actually the best the EVO 3D camera has to offer.

Saturation is only a small part of it. The 4G shot above has much better color and level balance all around.

I <3 my Evo...

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I *really* want an Atrix. But I REALLY REALLY don't want to deal with ATT.

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Holy shitsnacks!